The present invention relates to cartons for storing and shipping heavy appliances and, more particularly, to a carton for protecting an appliance which has an upper flange intended to carry a portion of the weight of the appliance.
Most heavy appliances are shipped using a container to protect the painted or otherwise decorative surfaces of the appliance, but stand on their own feet either within a carton or separate from the carton structure. Certain appliances, however, such as bathtubs or sinks, are intended to be installed for final use using a top flange member to support a significant portion of the appliance weight. Such appliances may include feet, but it has been found desirable to ship these appliances using the flange rather than the feet to support at least a portion of the appliance weight. While a number of solutions, such as wooden crating or wooden support columns within a cardboard crate may appear most feasible for supporting the appliance and protecting it from damage during shipment, all such solutions substantially increase the packaging cost and thus the ultimate cost of the appliance to the consumer.
Cardboard boxes by themselves, and particularly unitarily formed cardboard boxes, are generally considered to be too weak to support such a flanged structure from the flange and are therefore used solely for protecting the decorative finish on appliances.
It will be recognized, additionally, that it has become increasingly common in the container art to form cardboard inserts separate from a carton and folded to support certain elements within the carton. Such inserts require separate manufacture and installation during packaging and therefore substantially increase the cost of the container. Even such inserts, however, are normally considered to be too weak to support heavy appliances from an upper flange and are normally used only to position fragile elements within a box structure.